


The Problem with Humans

by demonfox38



Series: DLC from DF38 [12]
Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: Gen, Philosophizing about death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-04
Updated: 2013-10-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:47:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23334862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/demonfox38/pseuds/demonfox38
Summary: The Medic is used to fixing biological damage, the Engineer mechanical. How are they supposed to address problems of a spiritual nature?
Series: DLC from DF38 [12]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1677937
Comments: 1
Kudos: 11





	The Problem with Humans

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally posted on October 4th, 2013 to Tumblr. It was prompted with the phrase "It's a thankless job, but somebody's got to do it."

The nights were becoming long again. He’d watched the sky swell darker over the fall horizon forty, fifty times before. If he was lucky, he would be able to watch it recede that many times more in the cold, dewy mornings of spring. He was a man long in the tooth, well accustomed to the swell and waning of the seasons. Still fascinated with them, too. It was his love for the circular nature of the world, of its creatures and their cores, that kept his enthusiasm raised.

It was easy to die, knowing he would live again. His spirit was not quelled by bullets, flames, and the black winds of death. He was a doctor, and he fought against its overpowering tide. Even when it dragged him beneath the abyssal seas of fate, he would raise his head over the waves once more. He was a perpetually burning flame, an inquisitive mind that never shut off.

To others, his enthusiasm seemed mad. To himself? It was the fountain that kept him young.

Though the Medic’s eyes were fading in strength, his observations never faltered. He was a man of details, of seeing flaws and weaknesses. If a man came down with an illness and didn’t tell him, he would be the one to drag them out of their hidey holes. If another injured his hand, he would wrestle them to the ground just to pull out one splinter. That was the problem with his teammates, if he had to complain about them. Being men—manly, strong men—they had to protect their egos. Nothing shattered such a frail trait like a man in white robes doting on their bruises.

They didn’t seem to need him tonight. For that, he was thankful. He was looking forward to a quiet evening of tending his flock of doves. Sure, they were nosy, and they had a terrible habit of popping up in places doves should never go, but they were his. A holdover from his life before this never-ending war, when he was wild and free of reins.

He missed that life. Maybe he’d go back to it, one day. But, this was good enough.

It was a little past six-thirty when his peaceful night was interrupted with a squeak. The hinges on his infirmary doors hadn’t been oiled in quite a while. Doves leapt towards the ceiling. They were having nothing to do with this visitor. Only Archimedes, the flock’s head, stayed low. He hopped off his master’s pointer finger, then addressed the visitor. A gentle pat on its back was enough to reassure the bird.

“Guten Abend, Herr Engineer,” the Medic welcomed in his guest. “Vhat brings you here?”

The short man had a long look on his square face. He gave one last pat on Archimedes’ head, then released him to the rafters. The dove took off, allowing him to fetch a clipboard from the oversized pouch on the left side of his belt. “Got some bad news, Doc. I think you need to know about it.”

The Medic uncrossed his legs. He hopped out of his chair, then strolled towards the Engineer. “Vhat is zhat?”

“Well…” The Engineer trailed off for a moment. He took a deep breath, then let it slowly escape him. “D’ya remember a long time ago, back when we first started? You ‘n I, we said we’d talk if we had problems with each other’s equipment. So it wouldn’t be a problem in the middle of battle.”

“Ja. I remember,” the Medic nodded. “Is zhis about your dispenser? Is the medical gel making a mess again?”

The Engineer shook his head. “It might be worse than that, ‘m afraid.”

The Medic tipped his head to the side. There was only one other machine that the Engineer would talk to the Medic about, if it wasn’t the dispenser. He motioned for the clipboard in the Engineer’s hands. The shorter man gave it to him with no hesitation. The papers that the Engineer had saved were standard printouts from the respawn machine for this base. Data included were class IDs, time stamps for death, causes of death, and then times for revival. Most of them seemed to be routine. The Engineer had gone through its contents, highlighting outliers in the data.

It didn’t take the Medic long to see what the problem was. “Zhirty-two seconds. Forty-seven. Zhirty-eight. Fifty-five. Sixty-two? Vhat happened?”

The Engineer frowned, his thick lips pressed tight against each other. “Doc, that machine’s still runnin’ just fine. Look.” He flipped to the last page, then pointed towards an hour’s worth of deaths. “I turned the safety off of my sentry ‘n had it give me a fatal shot in the head every five minutes. Came back every time in fifteen seconds or less. But, those strange points…”

“It vasn’t under heavy stress, was it?” the Medic asked.

“Nope,” the Engineer replied. “I’ve seen those machines revive people every minute for hours on end. It’s been working for over a century under the same load. Hell, even if this one failed, the next one over would pick it right up. I guarantee it’s not those machines.”

The Medic tilted his head again. He reached for his glasses, then straightened them. “Vhat do you suppose is going on?”

For a man with such rich education and a massive vocabulary, the Engineer was oddly silent. He reached for his goggles, then pulled them down his face. His eyes looked red from dust, fatigue. A familiar frown settled on his face, stubborn as his spirit, refusing to leave. It was with a slow start that he finally formed an opinion. “Doc? You much of a psychologist?”

The Medic gave a snort. “It was practically a hobby for zhe entire country of Germany vhen I was a child! Zhat, and every other kind of science!”

His snappy attitude brought a low chuckle from the Engineer. The Texan collected himself, then began pondering again. “Think we’ve got a problem gettin’ our boys revived, Doc. If it ain’t the machines having problems, then that only leaves—”

“Our boys,” the Medic parroted the Engineer.

For once, the Medic put brakes on his motor mouth. He worked through the implications of such a statement. He was a man of science. Mad science, perhaps, but all the same, he followed the same principles. Thoughts as revered as Occam’s razor. If the Engineer was right, and he wasn’t speaking merely out of pride for his family’s line of work, then the machines were indeed fine. But, if there was still a slow respawn problem…

Well, if it wasn’t the machine, then it was the materials fed into it.

That didn’t make a lot of sense, either. The team was in peak physical condition, for the most part. The respawn system was balanced to allow for slow growth each day, if the man was better than he had been the day before. There was no fear of cancer, nor any long-growing disease. Sure, everyone had the sniffles every once in a while, but that wasn’t going to interfere with coming back from the dead.

That left a preposterous conclusion—that this wasn’t a physical problem of either man or machine.

The Medic put a hand on his chin. “Tell me. Vhat do you zhink I can do?”

“Doc, you’d know better than me,” the Engineer confessed. “I figured, if anyone would know about treatin’ the condition of a human, it would be you. All I know is our boys aren’t comin’ back on time. Maybe they’re lost on the other side, or—”

A small snicker escaped the Medic. “Engineer, I didn’t expect you to be so—”

“—Spiritual? Well, I don’t know what else to call it,” the Engineer huffed. “But, Doc, I’ve…”

The Engineer caught himself before he could speak further. He was ashamed to discuss his experiences. The Medic could hardly blame him. For a logical man like the Engineer, expressing anything that could be construed as a spiritual experience was frustrating and demeaning. Matters of faith had a terrible way of chewing through a person’s reason and a worse path towards harming others. It was something that no strict scientist wanted to have.

The Medic turned to the list once more. He read through the numbers, then nodded. “You vere one of zhe slow ones.”

“Yeah. I was,” the Engineer confessed. He sat down on the corner of one of the infirmary’s cots. He struggled to collect his thoughts. “You know, Doc? When I took this job, that old bastard died on me once. When we were in a meeting. ‘N he said that he didn’t see anythin’ on the other side. Just nothin’.”

“And vhat did you see?” the Medic asked.

The Engineer’s face lit up. “The moon.”

Now, there was an answer the Medic hadn’t expected to hear. Pearly gates, perhaps. Some kind of heaven or hell. Even a Technicolor nightmare made more sense than the moon. He sat down next to the Engineer, trying to figure out what that meant. Was the poor Texan’s mind snapping? Granted, the Medic’s had gone a long time ago, but it hadn’t cracked quite like this.

The Engineer lowered his head. “Just died, and I thought about it. Can’t remember the last time I sat and watched the night sky. ‘N I just went to it. Out of the sky—through the clouds—to the moon. And it was—”

“—beautiful?” the Medic interrupted.

“Yeah,” the Engineer sighed. A wave of embarrassment passed over him. He snapped his goggles up, then put them back on his face. “’Course, I heard the screamin’, and I came right back. Just let my mind wander too far ‘n too long, I think.”

“It’s not a bad zhing,” the Medic said.

The Engineer huffed again. “Well, it is if you’re out there, supposed to be killin’ men and machines.”

There was the dissonance. The Medic heard it in his teammate’s lamentations. Here was a man so focused on his job and his duty that he had hardly the time to spare on his own thoughts. A man that was so fixated on his work that he shot himself every five minutes for over an hour just to make sure his machines were working. Every night, he was like this. It was lucky for him that he had companions willing to put up with his pencil-scratching and clanking through the odd hours. The Medic wondered what he would be like if he didn’t have his doves’ care to clear his mind.

If he needed to mend anything, it was the Engineer’s brain.

The Medic tapped his hand on the clipboard. “I vill tell you zhis, Herr Engineer. Zhis clipboard? It is mine now. Zhese problems? Mine.”

That brought a distressed frown to the Engineer’s face. “Doc! I can handle this.”

“Ah, but it is like you said!” the Medic argued. “It is not a mechanical problem. It is a human problem. I am zhe Medic, and I fix zhe humans. So, it is mine now.”

The Engineer sighed, then stood up. “Fine, then. I’ve got other things to fix. Damn sentry keeps jamming, and I don’t think my teleporter’s—”

The Medic yanked the Engineer back down by his overalls’ right strap. “No more vorking! Vork time is over. Play time is now.”

“Never thought I’d hear a German say that,” the Engineer chuckled.

A wide grin spread across the Medic’s perfect teeth. “Ah, but zhat is zhe zhing about ve Germans! Vhen ve are young, ve learn to drink beer in small amounts. Ve learn self-control—vhen to vork, and vhen to relax. You Americans?” He swatted the Engineer on his backside with the clipboard. “No moderation!”

The Engineer wanted to be pissed with the Medic. The German could see it in the way his face went red. Never-the-less, laughter escaped him. “Alright. Alright! Don’t have to give me a whuppin’.”

“Smart man! You learn quickly,” the Medic teased.

Perhaps it wasn’t a perfect cure, but he started to see energy in the Engineer’s posture once again. At the very least, the mopey, forlorn friend that had entered his infirmary seemed gone, for the time being. That was the problem with emotional ailments—they always seemed to come in and go with the tides. And the moon, in this man’s case.

At least one of his needs had been met. That was enough.

“You know,” the Medic said. “It is getting to be late in the year. Back home, ve vould be celebrating zhe harvest. But, it vould be so cold outside. Much too late for outdoor cooking.”

The Engineer got the message. He smiled at the passive-aggressive order. “Didn’t eat supper, Doc?”

“Not yet. And I know you zhat still have some of zhose bratwursts in zhe freezer,” the Medic grinned.

Now, it was the Engineer’s turn to taunt the Medic. “Well, you know. It takes a lot of work to grill. Thought I wasn’t supposed to be workin’. Though, it is mighty fine to have a cooked meal with beer.”

The Medic screwed up his face. Had someone tipped him off on the doctor’s Oktoberfest stash? “Fine, fine. Two brats for one beer.”

“Think we got a deal,” the Engineer beamed. “You’re always such a pleasure to do business with, Doc.”

When the Engineer went off to prep his grill, the Medic studied the clipboard’s data again. Solutions were forming in his mind as he was reading. The Heavy was faltering in time. Of course. He was prone to melancholy behavior. A few rounds with him would get him back in motion. The Sniper was slowed as well. Surly, but easy to handle. As long as he had a carrot in front of his eyes, he would perk up. The Demoman? Now, that did surprise him. Still, a quiet evening would do well for his spirits. Perhaps they needed to talk about his home and his mother. She was always such a pill.

It wasn’t a question of how or if he could heal his men. The Medic simply knew that he would. They had their grinds, and he had his. His work didn’t strip him of his spirit. Yes, it was always a temporary solution. Everything would get sick, hurt, and perish. Even the little birds on his shoulders would come and go many times before him. That was just the nature of things.

Even when he did fight against it, even when he was weary, beer, brats, and companionship went a long way.


End file.
